#not shipping kamala w either of the two

[indigosabyss]

[Kamala, explaining her adventure with Monica and Carol to Nakia]

Kamala: So there was this lady. Her name was Dar-Benn and she was so beautiful. Bi awakening for me. Nakia, confused: Wait, Carol Danvers wasn't your bi awakening? Kamala: No. In hindsight, I see that that was a celebrity crush. But like, she's a superhero. You're supposed to admire her. Kamala: This woman? Very, very evil. But so pretty. I had to rethink everything.

[theculturedmarxist]

By Roger D. Harris  –   Sep 30, 2024

Left-liberals plea every four years that this really is the most important election ever and time to hold our noses and send a Democrat to the White House. The manifest destiny of US world leadership, we are told, is at stake, as is our precious democracy which we have so generously been exporting abroad.

Let’s leave aside the existential threats of climate change or nuclear war. However important, these issues are not on the November 5 ballot. Nor are they addressed in even minimally meaningful ways by the platforms of either of the major parties.

The USA, with its first-strike policy and upgrading its nuclear war fighting capacity, bears responsibility for Armageddon risk. And, in fact, the land-of-the-free has contributed more greenhouse gases to the world’s stockpile than any other country.

But the US electorate never voted these conditions in, so is it realistic to think that we can vote them out? The electoral arena has its limits. Nevertheless, we are admonished, our vote is very important.

But do the two major parties offer meaningful choices? Apparently, the 700 national security apparatchiks who signed a letter endorsing Kamala Harris think so. They fear that Trump is too soft on world domination. They find a comforting succor in Harris’s promise “to preserve the American military’s status as the most ‘lethal’ force in the world.” And oddly so do some left-liberals who welcome the security state, largely because they too don’t trust Trump with guiding the US empire.

Although a major left-liberal talking point is the imminent threat of fascism, their fear is focused on Trump’s dysfunctionality and his “deplorable” working class minions; not on the security apparatus of the state, which they have learned to love.

But fascism is not a personality disorder. The ruling class – whether its nominal head wears a red or blue hat – has no reason to impose a fascist dictatorship as long as left-liberals and their confederates embrace rather than oppose the security state.

Not only were the left-liberals enamored with the FBI’s “Saint” Robert Mueller, but they have welcomed the likes of George W. Bush and now Dick Cheney, because these war criminals also see the danger of Trump.

The Democratic Party has been captured by the foreign policy neoconservatives, who are jumping the red ship for the blue one. It’s not that Donald Trump is in any way an anti-imperialist, but Kamala Harris is seen as a more effective imperialist and defender of elite rule.

The ruling class is united in supporting US imperial hegemony, but needs to work out how best to achieve it. The blue team is confident that the empire has the capability to aim the canons full blast at both Russia and China at the same time. And they tend to take a more multilateral approach to empire building.

The red team is a little more circumspect, concerned with imperial overreach. They advocate a staged strategy of China as the primary target and only secondarily against Russia. This suggests why Ukraine’s president-for-life, who is at war with Russia, in effect campaigned for Kamala in the swing state of Pennsylvania.

The inauthenticity of the left-liberals While some left-liberals support a decisive Russian defeat in Ukraine, their overall concern is beating Trump.

The Democratic Party was transformed some time ago by the Clintons’ now defunct but successful Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), which advocated abandonment of its progressive constituencies in order to more effectively attract corporate support. While both parties vie to serve the wealthy class, the Democrats are now by a significant margin the ones favored by big money.

The triumph of the DLC signaled the demise of liberalism and the ascendancy of neoliberalism. Much more could be said about that transition (viz the Democratic Party has always been capitalist, with neoliberalism being its most recent expression), but suffice it to say the Democratic Party is the graveyard of progressive movements.

Liberals no longer even pretend to have an agenda other than defeating Trump. Their neglect of economic issues that benefit working people has created a vacuum, which opens the political arena for faux populists like Trump.

The now moribund liberal movement is thus relegated to two functions: (1) providing a bogus progressive patina to reactionary politics (2) and attacking those who still hold leftist principles. “Progressive Democrat,” sociologist James Petras argues, is an oxymoron.

Left-liberals have the habit of prefacing their capitulations with a recitation of their former leftist credentials. But what makes them inauthentic is their abandonment of principles. No transgression by the Democrats, absolutely none – not even genocide – deters this inauthentic left from supporting the Democratic presidential candidate.

We can respect, though disagree, with the right-wing for having principled red lines, such as abortion. In contrast, left-liberals not only find themselves bedfellows with Cheney, but they swallow anything and everything that the Democratic wing of the two-party duopoly feeds them.

Consequences of supporting the lesser of the two evils Although today the Democratic Party is arguably the leading war party, we would have cold comfort with the Republicans in power. And domestically the Democrats talk a better line on some social wedge issues that don’t threaten elite rule, such as women’s reproductive rights, although – as will be argued – their walk is not as good as their talk.

Getting back to “this year more than ever we have to support the Democratic presidential candidate,” the plea contains two truths. First, the “more than ever” part exposes a tendency to cry wolf in the past.

Remember that the world did not fall apart with the election of Richard Nixon in 1968. No lesser an authority than Noam Chomsky is nostalgic for Tricky Dick, who is now viewed as the last true liberal president. Nor did the planet stop spinning in 1980 when Ronald Reagan ascended to the Oval Office. Barack Obama now boasts that his policies differed little from the Gipper’s.

Which brings us to the second truth revealed in the plea. The entire body politic has been staggering to the right regardless of which wing of the duopoly is in power. This is in spite of the fact that the voting public is well to the left of them on almost every issue, from universal public healthcare to opposition to endless war.

Moreover, the left-liberals’ lesser-evil voting strategy itself bears some degree of responsibility for this reactionary tide.

The genius of the Clintons’ DLC was that the progressive New Deal coalition of labor and minority groups that supported the Democratic Party could be thrown under the bus with impunity, while the party courts the right. As long as purported progressives support the Democrats no matter what, the party has an incentive to sell out its left-leaning “captured constituents.”

Thus, we witnessed what passed for a presidential debate, with both contestants competing to prove who was more in favor of genocide for Palestinians and an ever expanding military.

The campaign for reproductive rights aborted But one may protest, let’s not let squeamishness about genocide blind us to the hope that the Democrats are better than the Republicans on at least the key issue of abortion.

However, this is the exception that proves the rule. As Margaret Kimberley of the Black Agenda Report noted, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, there were protests everywhere but at Barack Obama’s house, “the person who could have acted to protect the Roe decision.”

When Obama ran in 2008, he made passage of a ‘Freedom of Choice’ Act the centerpiece of his campaign. Once elected with majorities in Congress, he could have enshrined abortion rights into law and out of the purview of the Supreme Court. Instead, he never followed through on his promise.

This was a direct outcome of the logic of lesser evil in a two-party system. The folks who supported abortion rights had nowhere to go, so they were betrayed. Why embarrass Blue Dog Democrats and antagonize pro-lifers when the progressive dupes will always give the Democrats a pass?

Angst is not a substitute for action The Republican and Democratic parties are part of the same corporate duopoly, both of which support the US empire. Given there are two wings, there will inevitably be a lesser and greater evil on every issue and even in every election.

However, we need a less myopic view and to look beyond a given election to see the bigger picture of the historical reactionary trend exacerbated by lesser-evil voting. That is, to understand that the function of lesser-evil voting in the overarching two-party system is to allow the narrative to shift rightward.

If one’s game plan for system change includes electoral engagement, which both Marx and Lenin advocated (through an independent working class party, not by supporting a bourgeois party), the pressure needs to be applied when it counts. And that might mean taking a tip from the Tea Party by withholding the vote if your candidate crosses a red line. But that requires principles, which left-liberals have failed to evidence. Angst, however heartfelt, is not a substitute for action.

The left-liberals’ lesser-evil voting, which disregards third-parties with genuinely progressive politics, contributes to the rightward trajectory of US politics. It is not the only factor, but it is a step in the wrong direction. As for November 5th, we already know who will win…the ruling class.

[stone-man-warrior]

January 20: 2021: 8:42 pm:

Joe Bidden Hand Puppet, makeshift homemade craft version, available in bulk, online:

Joe Bidden Bobblehead Doll, w/Authentic Packaging and Platform:

Joe Bidden/Kamala Harris commemorative “Mating Pair” desk action figure set, Two-Pack:

“I heard Biggie Small’s shot Two-Pack... what did you hear?“

==============================================

9:07 pm:

Joe Bidden is not going to save the day.

He is only an extension of Donald Trump, but with a twist.

It’s all Screen Actor Guild, is all pre-arranged. There is no US President. There is the “Entertainment Union“ called SAG, creates an imaginary world where it appears as though there are two political parties who don‘t get along with one another very well. It’s all very entertaining, consumes a lot of time and resources to baby-sit them. They draw attention to themselves, so that the British/Vatican pirate ship can quietly move along on it’s journey in search of land, riches, slaves, and power.

The Twist is that Donald Trump had his own, separate terror army, millions of them, who all reside within the same terror army concealment as the SAG terror army does, secretly.

Riding around on the coat tails of the SAG terror army, is the Trump terror army. Both are composed of many millions of Christian terror pirates, who all have been supplied, housed, fed, armed, and supported in every way, by use of secretly distributed funds from US Treasury and Federal Reserve for about fifty years so far. The distribution of all of that financial support is extremely complex, concealed, hidden from view with an array of deceptive means that are such that the means are stacked one method on top of another, can change as is needed to a different method of support distribution of funds, and these days is made possible by digital banking magic, chipped debit and credit cards, and a whole bunch of other ways. JP Morgan Chase Bank Corporate take over is what makes much of the current methods possible, in association with key figures such as Leisure Suit Larry Kudlow and Steven Mnuchin.

Two separate terror army’s.

One knows of existence of the other, the Trump terror army secretly lives inside of the SAG/Bergoglio/Google/Vatican (is Biden out front for now) terror army.

The host terror army, the SAG terror army, the Mother of All Terror Army’s, has been oblivious to the existence of the Trump variety terror army until recently, thanks to this account at StoneMan Warrior about two years ago, when existence of “The Afterswords” was made public here on Tumblr Social Media. “The Afterswords” is what the Trump brand terror army calls themselves, is not something I made up.

So, I suspect that Joe Biden‘s first priority is going to be to make arrangements to try to flush out, starve, isolate, divide, and conquer the Afterswords terror army in creative ways.

Boris Johnson is an Aftersword high commander. His recent statements on Twitter about “Ohhh it’s a shame that so many records were stolen from British Police HQ” etc... is about a disrespect paid publicly from one terror army commander to another opposing terror army commander, that it’s such a shame that the Trump cabinet deleted all of the record keeping that Biden needs to get his hands on at the White House. I further suspect that the Trump team is not stupid, and planted a whole bunch of false bread crumbs for the Bidden Brigade to try to follow.

In a match of wits, Trump wins against Joe Biden, no contest.

Biden belongs to a terror army group who has had everything handed to them on a platter for so long that they don‘t even have to try anymore, and don‘t understand even that their own people have been slowly eliminated over many decades, and replaced with the Trump brand of Afterswords terror soldiers in the field.

In the neighborhoods, towns, cities and counties, where the battlefield has been, but is really a slaughter of US Citizens who don‘t know that they are under attack, is composed of representation of two opposing secret Christian terror army’s, but there is absolutely no representation at all for the US Citizens.

I am the only person defending for the USA.

There are no others.

SAG/Biden is in league with Britain/Vatican. (The Bergoglio; Google)

SAG/Trump is in league with German/Vatican. (SAG news media/Pope Benedict)

SAG news media is also split along a line drawn at the Vatican, the networks are either Pope Bendedict (is a real Pope, is German Pirate) aligned, or are Pope Francis (is not a Pope, is SAG Actor Pirate from Aaarrrgentina) aligned.

It’s more complicated than that, but Google, is part of the Biden terror. Twitter is Google. The Vatican, is Google. Biden, is the front man for the Google/Vatican, as of today ... even if it turnes out that Joe Biden died years ago, there is enough Time Warp film footage available, all pre-arranged long ago, to create the false reality that I started to explain above. It is likely that USA is lead by a ghost and a dead, two hump camel right now, not even puppets, but rather “Artifacts left on the screen” in the editing department at Universal Studios.

The Benedict parts of the Vatican are going to be very difficult to learn about. Google won’t help with that, Google needs to secretly flush them all out. It’s the difference between boys and men... The Bergoglio’s are the boys. are from Hollywood, the Benedict’s are the hard core pirate men that the boys of Hollywood are pissing off.

But it’s more complicated than that, and the boys/men analogy is a poor one.

Another simple analogy is that 2,021 years ago, a fierce dog was turned loose on the word, over time, the dog became confused, is getting old, and is often seen chasing it’s own tail on the front lawn these days.

================

Consider these ideas to help understand a little more:

Britain rules these places:

new Zealand; Australia; India; Japan; Hong Kong; Canada.

Parts of Europe.

Parts of South America.

Portugal is next door to Spain, absolute control over the Meditarian Sea and all of the shore line it’s surrounded by, is there at Spain/Portugal.

Portugal controls/rules Brazil.

Chinese are not Hong Kong, and Hong Kong is not China.

Nazi’s may be German’s, but German‘s are not necessarily Nazi’s.

There is no Russia, never was a Russia, there is Mongolia where they say Russia is, it’s all a lie, is there to make false balance of global power perspective. Putin is a movie star, an actor, Chernobyl is a manufactured accident that never happened, is a movie set in Uzbekistan, is there to make cover somehow for “new clear weapons”, or, is simply a shell of language used for talking about “new clear weapons”, which is poison gasses that include nitrous oxide, medazolam, and a host of other gasses that do not have publicly available names, make symptoms such as those of strong laxative as a weapon that can prevent people from defending themselves when exposed to “boutique custom airborne gasses”.

India is in charge of many, maybe most corporate 800 call centers that US consumers use to make contact with customer support, and, India is in charge of all of the 7-11 stores in the neighborhoods, creates a problem for US Consumers who say personal information to the 800 call centers, and then go for a Big Gulp at the Joe Biden/Barack Obama (Black Steve) Slush Fund HQ.

nasa is not a space agency any more. nasa is a SAG movie studio used for many purposes, one is to provide a false space presence, or superiority in the eyes of other nations. Another is as a enormous prophet center, where the video productions are cheap to make, but the space budget the fake programs are funded with are astronomical, real, and are funds that are stolen from taxpayers for the purpose of feeding, housing, supplying the Biden/Google/Vatican/Britain terror team of millions of Christian pirates.

Pence accessed all of that, may have hijacked the nasa arrangements from the opposing terror army, to feed, house, supply the Afterswords.

Those small details may help to get your head in a way to think about how to take USA away from all of the terror bastards, and give back to the US Citizens that is belongs to.

===============

10:21 pm:

The StoneMan plan for defeating all of the terrorism, starts with taking Twitter offline, permanent, gone, offline.

Then, SAG news media needs to be rounded up, spoken with, they all need to say what they know about the past fifty years, and, they need to write down exactly the plan that they used for assassinating John F. Kennedy.

Google must be taken into custody of free people, some US and Global national security needs to take Google, preserve the record keeping, make the thing work correctly without spying on people for take-out like they have been doing.

All of the “Unicorns” must be shut down, pay special considerations to Musk and Bezos and the outfits they are puppets for. The Unicorns are all more Vatican terror cells.

We have to take out the Vatican the same way that Damascus was taken out, there is no other way.

All of SAG needs a short leash, find out what they know.

Ten Downing Street must be taken out with force too, along with SIS MI 6 at Vauxhaul Bridge.

House of Lords members needs to be found out who they are, and find all of their record keeping to learn where more of the problems are at.

That is a start.

Twitter first, is very important to take offline, soon, now, pronto.

US and British Music industry is Vatican High Command. That needs special attention.

US Congress and all of the US State Governors are all fake, all are SAG puppets who work for Britain/Vatican. They all have to go, we need to find some real US Citizens who want to lead, get rid of the traitors who are occupying our government. Give all of them Orange Jump suits, permanent, is too good for them, but something must be done at our own government leadership levels to maintain USA and restore the freedom the bastards stole from us.

Round up all of the SAG Card holders, the entire entertainment industry, and the others I mentioned, take the treasonous bastards to Easter Island, and drop them off permanently there.

===============================

11:35 pm:

Local Update:

A walk to the mailbox was cold and uneventful.

It’s 30 degrees, overcast with high clouds. Feels much colder than it did last two nights, which were two degrees colder on the thermometer, but slightly less burning cold at the hands and face.

The neighborhood is quiet, but it’s late, I have not been outside in daylight hours for more than about two hours combined all this year, is far too dangerous for that.

There was one piece of mail in the mailbox, from Bank of America, was “Face Down“ in the box and that was noted as a message. (see reports of Joe Biden saying something about Vermont, or Delaware today, to understand the note from the “Alpha Breasts”, “Delmarva” about death of USA message he provided from the mail carrier today). It was a tax statement on a mortgage, is of interest.

Freeway sounds are front and center, not to the north or south, were more ominous, darker sounding freeway noises than last night. It’s important that Global security persons understand the size and capabilities of many millions of terror soldiers all involved in common effort, even if that effort is for the purpose that I will say something about the sounds made by distant traffic are more ominous and darker. “Drop D Freeway Tuning” was present tonight, intentionally.

The most notable of condition changes are that the Myers terror cell at 560...

(train on Russell road tracks is rolling through, about fifteen minutes early tonight at 11:52 pm.)

... has turned off the very bright porch light, and, the Chartrand terror cell at 376 has turned on a very bright additional porch light, illuminates the road in front of the house there. I usually would be on high alert when that happens, as that Chartrand bright porch light is often accompanied by a vehicle with a grill mounted machine gun that comes down the road as I am getting my mail, have to step in between the incoming rounds when that happens,

The Myers terror cell is without that bright porch light presents an illusion as if the front door is wide open, has a white string of holiday lighting around the door frame that makes the illusion happen.

There is some activity inside the Monroe’s house, is unusual to see any signs of life inside the house there, some lights turned on and off is all, but that never happens indoors, only outside lighting in pair of chicken coups ever happens there, but, not tonight.

Chapman terror cell is no longer presenting signs of strangers, as I predicted would be the case after explaining what is normal there, so, all appears as is normal at Chapman, at least for when there is no attacking going on, variety of normal. There are more than one kind of normal.

Strong’s terror cell has not been doing their usual antics as I step out onto my front walkway these past few nights, that is a good thing, they “bust into action” as I step outside most often, with a whole bunch of activity with people and vehicles all moving around most of the time for the past fifteen years or so, as I go out my front door, is usually accompanied by at least one car that leaves the Sunflower terror cell, goes to the church down the street quietly, and/or hauls ass fast towards Three Pines Road with loud hot rod car.

I heard one small airplane today fly overhead at about 2:30 pm., there has been reduction of small aircraft flyovers this year.

There have been almost no large commercial aircraft at all for a long time.

Yesterday, or day before, the SAGClubMed Junket Jet flew very low, fast, and loud directly over the house. NAMM Musicians Trade Show is this week, I have been expecting aggressive guitar players on attack mission, happens twice annually that the come to attack along with the NAMM Trade Show.

That’s all.

====

One other notable thing this past few days is about the forced air conditioning/heater thermostat. I got roped into replacing the analog bi-metal thermostat, and swapping that good one out for a digital terror equipped model many years ago, since then, the terror bastards are able to activate the fan for the HVAC remotely so that the fan is always running, the system will not shut off, does not cycle the way it is supposed to, and I have to manually reset the system in order to shut off the fan, witch is turned on remotely for it’s ability to create a negative air pressure inside the house, as is needed, when the terror bastards are ready to introduce the poison gasses into my home for priming me with nitrous prior to the physical attack. Happened last night in the kitchen, I don’t want to talk about it, it does not help to say that I killed the son of bitch, or don’t say that I killed the son of bitch terror bastards when they poison me and then come in with the keys that the sheriff hands out to terror bastards. The remote control that is used to control the heating system is not a remote that came with the thermostat, there is no indication that the digital thermostat is remote control capable, it’s hidden terror technology, and is also inside of your thermostat if you were convinced to put the digital kind, rather than the safe ones that are bi-metal thermostat tech.

(computer is hijacked, this addition will not post, have to try another way. Terror bastards are at 376 Jackpine again, have the thing that hijacks the computer from Centurylink/Google internet terror consortium. 1-21-2021: 12:38 am.)

[richmegavideo]

The big divide among 2020 Democrats over trade — and why it matters

Democrats are on the brink of completely reorienting their party on trade.

It’s a pretty safe bet that no candidate is going to campaign as a free trader in the 2020 Democratic primary, setting up the potential for a large-scale realignment on a major policy issue for the party.

The Democratic Party faces a fork in the road, on an issue where President Donald Trump has scrambled all the old alliances.

“I think we’re at a tipping point,” says Thea Lee, who leads the lefty Economic Policy Institute, which is skeptical of free trade agreements. “You could see Democrats retreat to their comfort blanket. My hope is we can convince people that’s not an option. We’re not going to go back to the status quo ante. What we need to do is have a forward-looking vision.”

Former Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, in part because of their decision to work with congressional Republicans, put the party on the path of free trade. They pursued trade liberalization in service of embracing global competition; the left’s dire warnings of jobs shipping overseas went unheeded. Then Trump staged a protectionist takeover of the Republican Party on his way to the White House.

Conversations with aides to 2020 contenders show Democrats are all over the map on trade. There’s a contingent of vocal trade skeptics, like Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders who are making the case that Trump — despite all his tough talk on trade — has not been aggressive enough to protect American workers and failed to live up to his promises. Trade-friendly Democrats like former Rep. Beto O’Rourke and former Vice President Joe Biden could stake out more of a Clinton/Obama-esque free-trade position in this debate. Stuck between are the likes of Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg. Harris, particularly, has had to answer to the demands of a global California economy without alienating the left-wing grassroots.

One chart, from the Peterson Institute, breaks down the 2020 Democratic field. The institute’s experts observed “Democratic contenders offer widely different perspectives on US trade policy, and thus on US engagement with the world in a post-Trump era.”

Peterson Institute

Democrats are on the cusp of a fundamental reorientation for their trade agenda. How 2020 Democrats respond to Trump’s brinksmanship will go a long way to define the United States’ future role in the global economy. Trade is one issue where the president has a lot of freedom to set his or her own agenda once in office, even if a president ultimately needs Congress to ratify new trade deals, giving the Democratic left a real chance to reorient the country’s trade policy if one of their candidates prevails.

Democrats have been trade-skeptical for a long time

Manufacturing jobs have dropped precipitously in the United States over the past 50 years. Thousands of American workers were left unemployed when the massive GM plant in Lordstown, Ohio, closed while the company has been increasing production in Mexico, and when the textile industry in North Carolina moved to cheaper labor markets in Brazil, China, Vietnam, and Bangladesh. The labor unions decimated by that macroeconomic trend make up an important piece of any Democratic primary coalition.

Trade skeptics point to multinational companies moving US jobs overseas as one of the material consequences of US trade agreements, an argument Trump adopted during the general election and in the White House. Progressives believe free trade has done more to line corporate pockets than protect workers or the climate.

Bill Pugliano/Getty Images

President Donald Trump speaks to auto workers at the American Center for Mobility on March 15, 2017, in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

“Do trade agreements protect multinational corporations that want to outsource and earn big profits and not be subject to a lot of annoying government regulations, or should they protect workers and consumers and the environment?” Lee says. “I would argue right now we don’t have the rules right. We’ve adopted a very corporate approach to trade.”

Democrats have always been more skeptical of trade, but a reorientation at the top of the party in the 1990s led the two most recent Democratic presidents to aggressively pursue free trade deals. Before that, Republicans were the ones seeking the free trade agreements, with a narrower sliver of mainstream Democrats joining them over the objections of their left wing.

The North American Free Trade Agreement — despite Trump’s claim that it was “given to us by Bill Clinton” — was originally negotiated by Republican President George H.W. Bush. Nearly half of the House Democratic conference, along with a handful of conservative Republicans, voted against it. Labor and environmental groups decried the deal as too weak, and many feared the jobs that would be sent overseas. Even the two top Democrats — House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt and House Majority Whip David Bonior — opposed it at the time. Likewise, the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), George W. Bush’s expansion of NAFTA, passed in 2005, almost entirely with Republican support; only 15 Democrats signed on to it.

And the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a behemoth trade deal between countries bordering the Pacific Ocean, including the United States, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Vietnam, Australia, and Chile, which was supposed to be Obama’s liberal successor to NAFTA, died after the 2016 election, on the strength of opposition from not only Trump but also from progressives. It became so politically untenable that Hillary Clinton, who praised the deal during her time as Obama’s secretary of state, withdrew her support during the primary election in 2016.

Her move showed that even the Obama-style trade liberalization was going to be a hard sell for Democrats. That is only truer heading into 2020, as Trump’s decision to rip up the old rules about trade has emboldened progressive Democrats who see an opening to outflank the president on one of their core issues.

Some Democrats genuinely thought you could balance trade with populism. It hasn’t work out.

Obama, who had voted against CAFTA in his first year in the US Senate, railed against outsourcing jobs on the campaign trail. He said he would renegotiate NAFTA, calling it “devastating” and “a big mistake.”

But as president, he adopted the more trade-friendly stance that trade was merely a scapegoat for other economic factors — globalization, first and foremost — a belief that permeated his administration as it went to work on the TPP deal that would eventually fail.

“Trade agreements are how you shape globalization to reflect our interests and our values,” Mike Froman, who was Obama’s US trade representative, told Vox. “Since you don’t get a chance to vote on technology or even globalization, trade agreements have become the scapegoat for other quite legitimate concerns about jobs and wages.”

Olivier Douliery/Getty Images

Activists hold a rally to protest the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in front of the White house on February 3, 2016, in Washington, DC.

Free trade proponents argue most of the job losses in manufacturing have actually been the byproduct of better technology, not trade. They assert the benefits of liberal trade are real but more diffuse — lower prices for consumers on a wide range of goods, namely — while the drawbacks tend to be acute, like when a factory closes because its production is moved elsewhere.

A decade ago, George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers estimated that each American household had reaped $10,000 in benefits on average that could be attributed to more liberal trade after World War II.

“Increased trade has made the United States more productive and has contributed to large increases in the U.S. standard of living,” the report stated.

Democrats who believe in free trade make the case that more investment in a social safety net and domestic programs would alleviate some of the populist anger over trade. For example, building a robust jobs retraining program would help to combat the effects of outsourcing.

Some programs do exist; Trade Adjustment Assistance, a 1960s entitlement program that has been expanded over the years, offers unemployment benefits and jobs training programs. But the results have been mixed; younger participants typically fare better than older workers, who generally suffer more financially from outsourced jobs. But those who did enroll in the jobs programs did better than those who did not.

Part of the problem is that the two sides disagree on whether they are even having the right debate. “It’s not either-or. It’s both,” Lee says. “The comfortable fiction that trade is blameless and it’s all technology is not supported by the facts.”

How 2020 Democratic candidates are positioning themselves on trade

For Democrats, the 2020 primary will center on the question of credibility. The Obama and Clinton compromises on trade have made hawks more cautious about other contenders with less established records. The left is eyeing much of the 2020 field warily for that reason.

Bernie Sanders has opposed just about every free trade agreement that’s come before Congress since they got there in early 1990s. Elizabeth Warren, who fiercely opposed the TPP, enjoys the same cache with the left. They’ll argue that Trump’s real record hasn’t matched up to his populist rhetoric.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) addresses a rally with protesters calling for higher wages for federal contract workers on November 10, 2015 in Washington, DC.

The free trade skeptics believe in those two. “They’ve saying that stuff for a long time,” Lee says. “I have less confidence in some of the people who have been all over the map and now want to appeal to voters after having been in a lot of different places. That’s been a pattern with Democratic politicians in the past.”

Cory Booker and Amy Klobuchar have also generally opposed free-trade deals in office, though it is not a signature issue for them in the same way it is for Sanders and Warren. Still, Booker opposed giving Obama fast-track authority for TPP as did Klobuchar, who also voted against the Central American free trade agreement in 2006.

Biden, if he runs, has a worker-friendly image, but he will inherit the free trade mantle as a veteran of the Obama administration. Beto O’Rourke voted for the TPP deal in the House, which might make him unacceptable to trade hardliners, though he said during his Senate campaign last year that he wanted to see an improved NAFTA negotiated in the coming years.

“We cannot lose that critically important relationship with Mexico and Canada and, by extension, the rest of the world,” O’Rourke said last April. “Whether it is the energy we produce, whether it is the cotton we grow, whether it is the cattle we raise, all of this has a connection to the rest of the world and very often is looking for a market somewhere else.”

Somewhere in the middle sits Kamala Harris.

The TPP was one of the hottest issues in politics during Harris’s 2016 Senate campaign, and Harris initially declined to take a firm stance on it: “We want to strike a balance that allows America’s economy to prosper, and that’s going to be about our workers and our businesses,” she said in April 2015, neither endorsing nor really opposing the trade deal. But once Rep. Loretta Sanchez, a fierce TPP critic, entered the race against her, Harris came out against the trade pact, stating it did not adequately protect US workers or the environment.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) talks to the press before attending a meeting in the Hart Senate Office Building on April 25, 2017 in Washington, DC.

Since then, Harris has sat at every intersection of the trade debate. She talks about giving workers a voice and protecting American jobs. But she doesn’t approve of Trump’s protectionism, a trade regime that she sees as destroying the United States’ international relations, as well as taking a toll on consumers and manufacturers.

Democrats will decide their post-Trump trade agenda in the 2020 primary

In real-world policy terms, the debate is really about trade agreements and, to some extent, the World Trade Organization. It’s about which rules are set for trade and which rules are enforced.

Trade agreements are negotiated by the administration and given preferential treatment for speedy approval in Congress — that’s why trade is an issue where presidents can have enormous influence. Those agreements are filled with “chapters” — rules, or the basis for rules and regulations rather, on specific issues like intellectual property and labor rights and environmental protections. The president picks the people who wrote these trade agreements and those rules. Trump has not only introduced his headline-grabbing tariffs, but the White House has also overseen the rewriting of a North American trade agreement.

Left-wing Democrats like Warren, and Sanders do not want to go back to the Obama brand of open trade policy. So they have to now distinguish their protectionism, which Sanders popularized on the national political stage during the 2016 election, from Trump’s.

Some of their solutions can feel a little abstract — “negotiate better trade deals!” Not far afield from what Donald Trump was promising during the 2016 campaign. It’s a weakness even lefty wonks recognize.

“To be honest, it’s something I would like to see all of us on the progressive side spend a lot more time fleshing out,” Lee says. “What does a progressive globalization trade agenda look going forward? People have a little bit of a hard time articulating it.”

Meanwhile, more free trade–friendly Democrats have a completely different challenge; their positions on trade are easily distinguishable from Trump’s (they largely support free trade) but politically dangerous with the progressive grassroots.

Americans broadly are actually more positive toward trade liberalization (and wary of protectionism) than the rhetoric from the current president or the progressive firebrands might lead you to believe. There is an audience for it. But not necessarily in a Democratic primary.

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Ascendants and Americans

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Thirty years of incompetence has made American politics into an ethnic conflict. 

by Tom Shackleford

I think most of us by now have heard about a speech by George W. Bush in which he denounced White Nationalism and argued for globalism. I read some excerpts, but I never even bothered to actually listen to it. After all, being denounced by a bumbling mass-murderer doesn’t exactly sting. However, it did prompt a bit of retrospection on the past 30 years.

Bipartisan Policy

First, consider the bipartisan consensus that placed our country on its path to ruin. Disingenuous rhetoric was quite literally the only thing that differentiated either party. In the practical application of power, they were quite consistent regardless of shifting electoral outcomes. Both serve the same oligarchy, whose interests don’t coincide with the average person. 

For instance, the Third World demographic influx has come at the exclusive electoral benefit of the Democrats, but it had had the support of Republicans. In some cases, this support is quite explicit. I can recall a speech made last year by John McCain in which he announced that he would never stop fighting for amnesty. I can’t help but think that this was the result of ulterior motives that had nothing to do with mere elections. If not, why would he advocate for a dramatic surge in the demographic process that cost him the presidency? 

One Path: The Ascendant

This is the terminal phase of the USA. During this era, there are two paths to the presidency. The first was demonstrated by the 2008 and 2012 elections. Obama was twice installed in the Oval Office by vibrancy. It is now readily apparent that the success of this approach hinged on the very fact that he himself is a vibrant. Race is real and it is the primary factor that gets these people into voting booths. The average vibrant can’t even perform basic arithmetic, let alone get a grasp on the complex set of issues that shape the fate of the country. He looked like them, in sharp contrast to his two White opponents, and that was really all that mattered. The hollow sophistry barked at them was irrelevant. 

This led the establishment into the paradigm of a “Coalition of the Ascendant,” which was, from then on, considered to be the decisive voting bloc. Hillary’s campaign functioned on this premise, stupidly assuming that they could replicate Obama outcomes without noticing that they were running a White woman. 

That wasn’t a mere campaign. It was the greatest propaganda effort in the history of the human race. Obama had similar backing at his disposal, but he pretty much sold himself. That “Hope” poster was perhaps all it took. Selling Hillary Clinton on the other hand, was quite a tall order.  Thus, her team worked in tight, disciplined coordination with the MSM and Corporatocracy that owns it. This coalition included the vocal support of the major tech companies that dominate online discourse. Everyone from Google’s Eric Schmidt to Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg worked publicly on its behalf. Last November, it proved to be a spectacular failure that’s understandably induced nonstop hysteria ever since. 

The Other Path: Acknowledge Pissed-Off White People

Hillary ended up being humiliated by a man she thought had zero chance of winning. During the campaign, emails disclosed by Wikileaks revealed that they were so confident of Trump’s toxicity that they asked the MSM to push coverage of him over the other Republican primary cucks. This was done because they calculated that Trump winning the Republican nomination would seal victory by a huge margin long before votes were even cast. 

They ended up losing to Trump mainly because he shared the same skin color (calling him orange didn’t work) as the walking corpse they were parading in front of the cameras. While Trump traveled the country with an animalistic energy, his campaign infrastructure was minimal and ill-disciplined. It didn’t even have the genuine support of the party he decided to hijack. Trump took the approach of responding to the anger of White America over having the economic foundation of their country exported, while a new people were imported to displace them and turn the place into a Third World cesspool. His win illustrated that addressing reality can still prevail no matter how many resources are deployed in opposition.

Blindness

Regardless, neither party has learned much from the whole fiasco. I have to give credit to the Democrats for at least attempting to de-platform us. Publicly, it’s been non-stop nonsense about Russia. Behind the curtain, it’s obvious that insiders realized what happened. An MSM poll recently pegged around 10% of Americans as holding Alt Right views, which is of course a staggering underestimate, since none of us would even participate in a poll. In an election that came down to a handful of votes, in a handful of places, it’s reasonable to surmise that we made a significant impact. Hillary backed that up with a recent quote that we’re just “.15%” of the population.  Chronic liars often dispense truth in much the way that right appears left from the opposite direction. 

Unfortunately for them, efforts to counter our influence took the inevitable form of Nazi name-calling in the MSM. By labeling us what we clearly are not and then naming Trump as one of us, as he clearly is not, they’ve been quite helpful in adding fuel to the blaze. 

Terry McAuliffe, a naïve presidential hopeful, instigated bedlam in Charlottesville in an attempt deal the Alt Right a death blow. This decision illustrates the level of miscalculation that still guides legacy politicians.  If Unite the Right went off as a peaceful rally as its organizers intended and conducted repeatedly in the past, then it would have been a fleeting headline. Instead it’s a story that just won’t go away. This has proven to be a huge boon, because a movement appealing to realists can only benefit from publicity. 

It seems that they considered us something that would fizzle out like the Tea Party, without understanding that we’re only getting bigger as the existential crisis in Western Civilization continues to worsen. White politicians like McAuliffe are deluded enough to think that they can follow in the footsteps of the Bushes and Clintons, even though that model belongs to an era that passed at least a decade ago.

Bushes and Clintons in the Rearview

In a political sense, the signature accomplishment of the Bushes and Clintons is to ensure that nobody like themselves can ever be president again. During their time in the sun, the demographic change and the alienation has become palpable. Currently, presidential viability for each party is as follows: as a Democrat, you can be a non-White, anti-White candidate and win. As a Republican, you can be a White, pro-White candidate and win. Neither candidate should articulate their approach explicitly.  

What this spells for 2020 is more clear for the Democrats than the Republicans. As a 75 year old, it’s not certain that Trump would want a second term even if his health allowed it. Moreover, this country has profound problems, both fiscal and economic, which seem likely to spiral in the interim.

If Trump doesn’t seek office again, I would predict the Democrats running Kamala Harris and winning over some imbecile like John Kasich. That’s because the Republican Party won’t allow another hijacking, and there’s nobody yet on the horizon with the financial resources and brazen mentality like Trump to pull off such a maneuver. We’ll just have to wait and see. Until then, enjoy the show.

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